


Conscientia

by muckraker (grendelity)



Category: Mononoke
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-12
Updated: 2008-08-12
Packaged: 2017-10-08 18:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grendelity/pseuds/muckraker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He smiles, peeling bloody lips from bloody teeth, and he raises his head to look at the creature before him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conscientia

**Author's Note:**

> mononoke_anime's fic/art 'thon #1. Prompt: unsealed.

"Ah," he says, pushing himself up from bloody tatami mats. "I see." He smiles, peeling bloody lips from bloody teeth, and he raises his head to look at the creature before him. Split from her human skin, the jorogumo glistens with blood and oil, her black exoskeleton swirling with the power her human host gave her. The girl's body is crumpled beneath her, split down the middle and empty of her organs and her skeleton; all that is left is a pool of bloody effluvia and her skin, shed like an old kimono. The jorogumo's legs are tipped with points like knives, and they stab down through the girl's sodden remains as she raises her full, massive weight off the floor.

He gives a choking laugh and spits blood to the mats and pulls up one leg to gain purchase on the slippery floor. "This is not your world," he forces out, his vision sliding in and out of focus as the venom in his wound spreads. The jorogumo's palps churn the air, wet with his blood, and her arching legs tear slashes in the mats as she comes closer. He presses a hand to his side, feeling the slash in his kimono and the hot slide of blood over his fingers. With the other, he grips the taima sword, tearing a nail on its jagged filigree. He can see the girl's regret that gave this creature form, the infidelity of a lover and the betrayal of her family, a bitter suicide at the bottom of a deep pool and the spider that feasted upon her bloated flesh.

As she approaches, he can hear a whisper from the spider as her clutching mandibles spread and open toward him, wicked hooks that gleam in the twilight air. It is a girl's voice, plaintive and tearful, and it says, _He loved me. He loved me._ Venom coats their knife-points, and those palps reach for him, grasping like hands. He clutches at his wound and tastes the hot metal of blood, and the taima sword burns in his hand.

"Begone," he says. _Release._

And he slips on the slick of his own blood, and he falls and falls and falls. He can feel himself fade and lighten as heat blossoms at his fingers and lifts away like smoke, and his blood is cold on his lips, spreading over his chest and turning leaden and numb at his side. He smells charged air and there is a hand against his chest that presses and presses and slips through to grip his heart with a white-hot burn that makes him arch his spine and part his lips and he slides into blessed darkness as the jorogumo's scream echoes in his ears.

He can dream it: the sword a column of light and fire like a star, and the jorogumo rearing back on her legs, spitting filmy web to tangle her opponent's feet, hooking her legs to trip him and draw him in. And he can dream her opponent, too, and his slit of eyes and slash of mouth, his snarl of triumph and his smile like a blade. He can see how she dies, in a burst of rancid blood and filthy river water, her venom steaming into the night. And still he sleeps, curled into himself like an animal in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by inky darkness.

That darkness breaks and opens into white with that hand again, this time a fist against the wound in his side, pushing under the torn kimono to draw long nails across the gash in his skin, and he draws a ragged breath through his mouth, his lips at first glued together with blood. As he takes this the first breath, lips seal over his mouth and fire kisses him, hard, and he gags on the blood in his throat. He cracks his eyes and he can see white and gold and silver and ghost-images that resolve themselves if he focuses, becoming the edge of a finger that gently brushes against his cheek, or lips that lower to kiss him again, and he can feel the tongue this time, taste more than his own blood dried on his lips.

Fingers peel away his sodden kimono to that cold place pulsing poison into his body, and the touch of lips on the wound make him twist and arch against the stab of pain. Feeling pours back into his middle with a wash of pins and needles and fire, fire, fire. He concentrates as hard as he can, opening his eyes to those shadows of movement over him and he reaches out and tangles his hands in long, long hair, and burning gold flickers before him and then brown skin and smoldering eyes and a smile and hands are tracing their way over his skin, moving over the crusted streaks of blood on his stomach and lower, lower.

He has handfuls of this hair in his fists, this hair that tumbles over his bared belly like a breath of desert wind and sunlight, and he tilts his head back and takes shallow, pained breaths as his wound bleeds out its venom, and then lips close around his member and he shudders, his grip tightening. Teeth graze over his flesh and he closes his eyes but all he can see is white, all he can feel is heat. Hands unfurl on his legs, drawing lines of warmth over the paths of veins and muscle, and he swallows and his other smiles and mimics him. He lets out a small sound of release and tugs on his handfuls of hair and clasps his bloody hands over high cheekbones and strong jaw, the edges of ears and the searing marks like burns.

His other is sliding out of focus, jerking and flickering into nothing, and those blazing-gold marks are fading. He lifts his face and feels the brush of a kiss over his cheek, and something changes in the air and the smell of night and rain is growing stronger. He tries to hug his other to himself, but he is clutching a glittering cloud of dust to nothing and he opens his eyes and he is lying in the wreckage of a poor dead girl's room, and his hands are like embers that can burn anything he may touch.


End file.
